wpollock

5 ms·

1.
by wpollock 16d ago
Your point is fishy. But if the IAU definition changes to "a body orbiting a star", we can rename them to "paparazzi".
2.
by wpollock 16d ago
[Edited for clarity.] My issue with the IAU's definition is that the body must "orbit the Sun". I would prefer they said "star" instead, and excluded other stars (so a binary star means neither star is a planet).
3.
by wpollock 16d ago
You remind me of Episode 2 of the Apothecary Diaries: several Chinese troops were poisoned after eating local food. The food was fine, the wood used for fire and eating utensils was the source. I wonder if something like that ever actually
4.
by wpollock 16d ago
You might enjoy the book "The Weans" by Robert Nathans, < https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/2664067-the-weans >
5.
by wpollock 16d ago
> ... so why would a community living on the edge of subsistence, whose primary concerns were finding food, keeping that fire going, protecting children from predators, allow someone to spend so much time away from those tasks? One possi
6.
by wpollock 29d ago
> Just learn SQL.... I agree. In my experience, ORMs are more complex and harder to learn to an expert level than SQL. Knowing Java (but not SQL) doesn't help much with learning Java ORMs (Again, to an expert level). Besides not
7.
by wpollock 1mo ago
Just because the cave is sealed now, does not mean it has been sealed for millions of years. Even for geology, 5.5M years is a long time. I don't understand how they can claim it never had connections to the outside, just because it d
8.
by wpollock 1mo ago
> He thinks everyone needs manpages. I told him I never look at any local man page ever; I only look online for help... Everyone's workflow is different. Your's obviously works for you and many others. But I like local man page
9.
by wpollock 2mo ago
I think you have mixed up ordered and unordered lists? But a fun sounding project, good luck!
10.
by wpollock 2mo ago
In 1982 I purchased a GE analog alarm clock which plugs into an electric socket, has a gentle backlight and a snooze button. It cost 4-5 dollars. This clock still sits on my nightstand. The backlight stopped working years ago, the cheap pl
11.
by wpollock 2mo ago
The title of this post reminds me of a favorite quote "Write code as if the next person to maintain it is a homicidal maniac who knows where you live!"
12.
by wpollock 2mo ago
Car: You look tired. There's a motel in 3 miles. Car: You appear to be suffering from acne. Try Zit-away, available at the convenience store in 2.4 kilometers. Car: Facial recognition failed. Car is now disabled. Contact your car d
13.
by wpollock 3mo ago
> Should be using strcpy_s or strncpy_s These functions are optional in the C standard and not always present. AFAIK, they are not included in glibc as of 2025.
14.
by wpollock 3mo ago
TIL! Thanks!
15.
by wpollock 3mo ago
Stéphane (not "M") Chazelas is a genius. I have written him several times over the past 30 years, encouraging him to write a book about shell, POSIX, and other topics that he is an expert in. He writes very well too. I fear we w
16.
by wpollock 3mo ago
This article is a bit misleading. Linux kernel programming uses C, but not the C standard library and never has. The string functions discussed here are "helper" functions included in the kernel and are not part of the standard
17.
by wpollock 3mo ago
One point of clarification: with git, "global" means per-user, not "machine-wide. (I never understood why "--global" wasn't better named, maybe "--user".) That's why these pathnames are in a us
18.
by wpollock 3mo ago
> There are laws in place forbidding government agencies from merging together datasets. This is an excellent point. In my opinion, such laws are a good idea. Most of the time, policy decisions should not require IRS data. (Or other p
19.
by wpollock 3mo ago
> Are you saying the census shouldn't collect any data that people wouldn't be comfortable publishing? Because that's a recipe for a census that is far less useful for helping the country make useful decisions. I'll s
20.
by wpollock 3mo ago
The Sahara desert. It's not only repetitive but it repeats itself too as well. These gems are brought to you by the department of redundancy department.
21.
by wpollock 3mo ago
One of several reasons to partition a large volume into smaller ones. At least, back then.
22.
by wpollock 3mo ago
For what it's worth, in the U.S. at least you can connect to your local library with an app named "libby". I used this frequently on my Android phone to download books and magazines, and you can connect with the InterLibrary
23.
by wpollock 3mo ago
I wonder how many readers realized your joke here. For the ones who didn't, the 4-byte "magic number" that identifies Java .class files, in hex, spell "CAFEBABE".
24.
by wpollock 4mo ago
This. Today, well-meaning doctors cannot spend more than 5-10 minutes between seeing patients. Medical shows on TV show teams of physicians working on one or two patients per week. The reality in my part of the world is that each doctor
25.
by wpollock 4mo ago
> Do you know how to operate a punch card? I remember! You created a control card, with tab stops and other controls, wrapped it around a control drum, and then had an easy time punching your source FORTRAN! I just looked and found my o
26.
by wpollock 4mo ago
Very nice write up! I am a fan of Rust and have little exposure to Go. That said, a couple of very minor points: cargo audit is not built-in, it is 3rd party. (The comparison table near the top isn't clear about that, and the follow
27.
by wpollock 4mo ago
> Typescript is only a linter... I never thought of Typescript (TS) that way. I believe TS is a language addition that enabled smarter JavaScript linters; TS is not a linter program per se. However, TS is more than that now. The extra
28.
by wpollock 4mo ago
> Theres no reason to ship TS to an end user browser. As things are now, developers write code in TypeScript, then debug and update code in Javascript. It might not be much of a reason, but a single language throughout is surely easier
29.
by wpollock 4mo ago
> Because "it doesn't exist". It's just a layer on top of js, ... C++ was originally a layer on top of C. The first C++ compiler, "cfront" was actually a transpiler to C. There is nothing preventing TypeScr
30.
by wpollock 4mo ago
Long ago, I had the insight that not all users are equally technically proficient. Some had the chops to fix some problems if given sufficient information. Other users would be confused with too much detail. I was writing code for AT&

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